


No Matter How Many

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Crossover, F/M, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Time Shenanigans, as is now painfully obvious to anyone with a brain, everyone is Emiya Kiritsugu, horus is madoka, totally different continuity than the last time I wrote a crossover between these fandoms, you have basically gone completely off the deep end in every way, you have officially gone grimdark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9334199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: Homura will prevent the Heresy and save the galaxy, no matter how many tries it takes.





	

_Iteration 27_

‘I promise. I will break all fates.’

‘Have we met?’ Argel Tal asks.

Stop. Back up.

***

_Iteration 1047_

Step one. Shoot Erebus.

Well, there’s a couple steps before that, like ‘fix eyes’ and ‘change clothes’, but those have become reflex. Once you were proud of this uniform. Now you only care it’s less useful than power armour; you know where to find some in your size.

It’s a little before Davin. You wish you could go back further sometimes, back to the root of problems rather than trying to deal with the symptoms now, but you can’t. Sometimes you wish you could go back to the War in Heaven and systematically keep everything from getting screwed up in the first place from then to now, but that’s just silly. You like to believe that things at this point have started to break but haven’t reached the point of no return. You can’t believe otherwise.

‘Who are you?’

‘Too complicated to explain.’

You don’t waste time trading words with Horus anymore. There’s a certain level of ‘What? Why did you do that?’ that turns out to be common to all men, even great ones, and it’s really tedious again and again. You know his reactions in particular.

You leave him a letter. You have this down to a science, which is to say you memorised it and recopy as many times as necessary. He wrote it himself, a different him. Which is good, because you don’t have the patience to convince him his father loves and trusts him and he’s worthy of that and get him to cool his tits and meanwhile here’s everything he needs to know about Chaos.

You still love about him that he tries just as hard to save his brothers when he’s a loyalist as he tries to corrupt them when he’s a traitor, no matter how much trouble it always ends up causing for you.

He hasn’t trusted you in a long time. It’s probably the randomly shooting people and then being mysterious about everything. There are a lot of things that are true but are too dangerous for him to know. You can’t explain how you came by information and you tend to say hurtful things you shouldn’t when trying to ‘prove yourself’. Even when anyone believes you when you try to explain things, it rarely helps because they weren’t there and don’t have the fullness of those experiences and just mess up worse based on the incomplete things you told them.

You don’t try anymore. The only one you can count on is you.

You know lots of secrets. All sorts of things have been unearthed or become important in one timeline or another and you remember them all. You know a lot of people for the same reason.

You know what really happened that day in the secret gene-labs beneath the Himalazians. You know what sleeps in the labyrinth on Mars. You know Cypher’s real name and how to forge an anathame and how a Webway works and what happened to the two lost ones and how many wolves there are on Fenris and Garviel Loken’s favourite colour and...

You keep waking up in this little girl’s body when you’re old.

You cut through the air and reality with your subtle knife and are gone to where you need to be next.

***

_Iteration 2_

You were so happy you could save him from Chaos.

For the first time, you got to know Horus, the man in all his virtues and flaws, not the shadow you’d imagined. You grew to see why he did, could, turn to Chaos and lose sight of everything. You learned the things about him that left you a little exasperated under the surface, with how he treated you even if you didn’t know how to speak up to complain about it.

(Later, you’ll yell at him for it. You’ll yell at a lot of people. ‘You jackass, you’re not the only person who matters!’ Even though he is, for you.)

You spent time together, talked together, fought together. He brought you out of your shell until you stopped stammering and stopped apologising.

He hadn’t fallen. Didn’t fall.

You thought you would never forgive Guilliman for the broken standard pole plunged through Horus’s chest. You looked into his daemonic face as you turned back time and thought you couldn’t hate more than you did just then and you would make him pay.

It would be two dozen more timelines before you realised that everyone was interconnected and to save Horus you would have to save the entire galaxy.

***

_Iteration 98_

‘Just how many meltabombs do you have?’

You’re not sure. You’ve lost count. Very, very rare is it that you have to worry about any fleet you like running out, not to mention all the people you’d _like_ to leave unarmoured and unarmed if you could spare enough magic to manage it. You’re certainly not going to run out. Going through your extradimensional pocket, why do you even have that melta cannon?

‘How many did you used to have?’

Abaddon stares at you. He looks at the daemon before him. You can see him decide he doesn’t want to know and he turns from you. He will hold the line. For Lupercal.

You can’t bring yourself to hate Abaddon no matter how often he falls to Chaos. You’ve done some at least as stupid things for love of Horus yourself.

You once hugged him, the first time in your life you wanted to throw your arms around someone because you were so happy and you did. He let you and sort of patted your back awkwardly and you’d never been happier about bruises in your life.

***

_Iteration 1_

‘Don’t cry.’

You don’t stop crying. You can’t stop crying. If you’d thought the daemon about to kill you earlier had been scary, it was only because you hadn’t seen the man who saved you yet. You hadn’t been so afraid because everyone else was dead. What did it matter if you were dead too? It’s not like you had ever mattered or been worth anything in the first place.

Astartes scared you enough. Whatever he is is much, much worse. You’re embarrassingly stupid, but you could hardly not know who he is. A primarch is supposed to be glorious and inspiring and perfect; he is hideous, wracked with mutations. He is still great, but he is as twisted by Chaos as the worst cultist you’ve ever seen before.

Yet, despite how terrible he is, he looks so delighted when he looks between the evaporating daemon and you. Like he’s so grateful and he was able to save even one person.

You’ve never made anyone happy before in all your life.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Probationary-Cadet Akemi... Homura Akemi.’

He is twitching in pain and seemed to be fighting something only he can see even before he fell over, unable to limp on any further.

You inch over towards him. You’re sure he could kill you from slightly further away anyway, if he were so inclined. You’re not actually worried about that, despite knowing you should be.

‘Could you do something for me, Homura?’

No one’s ever asked a favour of you, except maybe to shut up or go away. You’ve never been anything but a burden to everyone. ‘What is it?’ you asked. You think that you’d walk in space without a pressure suit if you could help someone just once in your useless life.

‘Stay with me until the end.’

It’s such a little thing. You start to cry again. You try to wipe your eyes but your glasses keep being in the way. There really is nothing you can do.

He takes both your hands in his massive palm, like he’s comforting you even though your skirt is soaked in his swiftly congealing blood. ‘It’s not nothing. You can’t stop me from dying. It’s too late for anything. I deserve to die after I killed... I killed...’ He looks hurt for the first time. ‘It’s all my fault.’

Maybe he’s right. But he protected you and that’s the one thing you’re sure of. ‘I know you’re not a bad person.’

‘You’re wrong. It would be best if I were disappearing from this universe forever, but my soul will be theirs soon.’

Hideous as he is now, you see in him the man he was supposed to be. He saved you. You can’t do anything for him except watch him die and you can’t even save his soul from the consequences of things he’s already done.

‘I wish...’

***

_Iteration 1038_

You feel kind of like a servitor, you think. Your hands are a bit trembly and you might be sick at some point and you can’t remember when last you slept, but you can’t really feel any emotions and suspect all those other things are happening to someone else.

You can’t even muster up the passion of hatred for Constantin Valdor and in all the times you’ve met you’ve never not despised him. It’s practically your hobby.

You’ll definitely save him. No matter how many times you have to repeat it all. You’ll get it right. You can do this forever until everything comes out perfect. That’s what your power means.

For him, you remind yourself. For him, it will be worth it. You don’t feel anything, but if you tell yourself that often enough, maybe you’ll remember what it felt like when you first said those words.

***

_Iteration 539_

You have sex with him in one doomed timeline and decide never to do that again. You’re an adult—you’re ancient at this point, from how much time you’ve lived through again and again. Mostly it hurts and you don’t really enjoy yourself and it feeds the Chaos gods too much for your tastes. Slaanesh is always in the symphony of flesh against flesh. Khorne is in how much you hate the twisted, monstrous thing he’s become and yourself for letting him. Tzeentch is in how you never stop thinking about what you’re going to do next even when you’re with him. Nurgle is despair, and you’re in it.

You could get better from Bequa Kynska if you wanted to, and you put that next to your mental list of places to get parfaits if you really, really need one.

***

_Iteration 86_

Once, you accidentally save the life of a boy on Calth during an air raid while you’re concentrating on something else. His name is Bekan and he keeps trying to thank you with stale bread and you drop him off at an orphanage on Valhalla, a planet where nothing interesting has ever happened in any universe to your knowledge.

You feel pretty good about it afterwards. No matter how much of a failure you are, you rescued someone. You know have an inkling of how Horus felt when you first met. No matter how little it matters, no matter how little it makes up for, there’s a sense of accomplishment you don’t feel from all that you do that had to be done or everything would be even worse.

You save him eighteen times, then you forget to put it into your routine. You eventually remember again, but you’re too busy to waste your time on such things.

***

_Iteration 1953_

Your left tibia is broken in two places, your right femur in one. You can’t feel it, even in the distant way magical girls feel pain, because you’re pretty sure your lower spine is severed completely. You can feel your collarbones somewhat, and the ribs poking into your lungs. It’s not that important.

In your hands, your soulgem is black with only a few sparks of purple. You used too much magic. You let yourself think too hard. Stupid, you think now, but weakly. There’s a cold leech wrapping around your mind. You failed again. You always fail. You...

You are dying.

Then you are not.

The golden light is impossible to mistake for anything but what it is. You feel the darkness leeched away from your soul, the blackness from your soul gem until it’s clear and bright.

It’s like a weight’s been taken off your chest. You hadn’t realised it was so bad. You didn’t even remember what normal felt like, just bad and less bad. Now you’re able to try again, magically, physically, mentally.

A dying god gives you a single nod with the last of His strength.

The idea that anyone else in the entire galaxy believes in you is the most painful thing you’ve felt in a very long time.

You rewind the timeline.

***

_Iteration 31_

‘It must have been hard for you. It will be different now. I’ll help you.’

You can’t stop crying. How can he love you anyway, after all the time you failed to protect him?

‘Shhh. It’s alright now. You’ve been trying really hard, haven’t you? I thought I imagined seeing you in my dreams, but those things really happened to you, didn’t they?’

It’s not alright. It’s not going to be. He’s the Warmaster of the Imperium and/or Chaos and it’s pretty amazing to have him on your side, nothing like your clumsy fumbling. You cry into his shoulder and he dies in such a stupid way just when you almost got your hopes up.

As you go on, the ones where he hates you are so much easier.

***

_Iteration 144_

To save even one life on one side, you have to forsake one life on the other side. That is, to let the majority of people survive, you have to kill a minority of people.

You like Luther more than you like most people and you don’t feel anything when you put him near the top of your hit list.

***

_Iteration 1349_

After one very anomalous timeline, you put killing Talos Valcoran into your routine as sure as killing Erebus. It’s easier than it otherwise might be since he starts convulsing whenever you get within a kilometre of him. Every. Single. Time.

Maybe there’s a simple way to diffuse that whole situation, but honestly you can’t be bothered to figure out what it might be. (Also, you might have understood most of what he said, but it scared the hell out of you. He knew you. He knew what you had done. And he said things about what you were going to do. And you’re still just a little bit mad about what he did just to spite you while he was already dying last timeline.)

DAKKA.

You twitch your arm bones back into place and heal the fracture in the wrist of your meat-puppet from shooting a stormbolter without power-armour on to brace it.

Easy.

***

_Iteration 2463_

You watch the stars go out, one by one, slowly and without fuss.

The galaxy is dying. You don’t mind much and neither does anyone else, had there been an anyone else with you.

Chaos is gone, but with it the souls that made it up. You’re fine, because your soul isn’t in the Immaterium; you hold it in your hand.

You’ve seen variations of this before. Horus wins, then turns to destroy everything else because he can’t live with what he’s done. Praise Malal, Chaos turns upon itself. It didn’t used to be so easy to achieve.

‘When did he get so powerful?’

You are not unaware that each timeline is slightly different in ways that even the butterflies of your interventions cannot explain.

‘There’s time wrapped around him. I thought it was a primarch thing, but then I saw it on you too. Time, causality, the Immaterium exists outside all of them, you know. What did you do?’ John Grammaticus asked you. ‘How are you older than I am when you haven’t been born yet?’

It’s time travel, right? You can try as many times as you want, over and over, forever, until you succeed. You can get the perfect ending and because of that you can’t settle for anything less or everyone will suffer and you could have prevented it if only you had gotten everything right. You have all the time in the world.

No, you can’t have... You can’t have...

You turn away from the heat death of the universe and rewind the timeline.

***

_Iteration 240_

Horus smiles at you. ‘I’ve caused you a lot of trouble, haven’t I?’

You have no idea. You bastard, you bastard I hate you.

Sometimes you just want to go to Terra and yell and yell until Someone Else goes back in time and fixes all your problems by not having a complete and total history of fuckups in the first place and giving the kids hugs.

You know better. That would just putting yourself in danger for no reason. You couldn’t defend yourself from an attack from a power like that if He took exception. Then you wouldn’t be able to go on doing what needs done and only you can do.

You can’t rely on anyone.

***

_Iteration 2500_

‘Why are you doing this?’

Because... because... it’s habit, and to do otherwise would mean giving into despair. ‘Because there was once someone I loved and wanted to protect. I’ll save him and make him happy if I have to change the whole galaxy to do it.’

You don’t really believe anymore that you’ll ever succeed. You don’t know what you’d do if you ever did. You have stubbornness, not hope. You’ll never give up as long as you live, no matter how long it takes.


End file.
